Honey bees appear to have their center of origin in South and Southeast Asia (including the Philippines), as all the extant species except Apis mellifera are native to that region. Notably, living representatives of the earliest lineages to diverge (Apis florea and Apis andreniformis) have their center of origin there.[8]

The first Apis bees appear in the fossil record at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary (34 mya), in European deposits. The origin of these prehistoric honey bees does not necessarily indicate Europe as the place of origin of the genus, only that the bees were present in Europe by that time. Few fossil deposits are known from South Asia, the suspected region of honey bee origin, and fewer still have been thoroughly studied.

No Apis species existed in the New World during human times before the introduction of A. mellifera by Europeans. Only one fossil species is documented from the New World, Apis nearctica, known from a single 14-million-year-old specimen from Nevada.[9]

The close relatives of modern honey bees – e.g. bumblebees and stingless bees – are also social to some degree, and social behavior seems a plesiomorphic trait that predates the origin of the genus. Among the extant members of Apis, the more basal species make single, exposed combs, while the more recently evolved species nest in cavities and have multiple combs, which has greatly facilitated their domestication.

The electric vibrator was invented in the late 19th century as a medical instrument for pain relief and the treatment of various ailments, one account gives its first use at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris in 1878, with Romain Vigouroux cited as the inventor. English physician and inventor Joseph Mortimer Granville, who also developed an early model, asserted his own priority in the invention and has been described as the ‘father of the modern electromechanical vibrator’.[1] Mortimer Granville’s 1883 book Nerve-vibration and excitation as agents in the treatment of functional disorder and organic disease describes the intended use of his vibrator for purposes including pain relief, the treatment of neuralgia, neurasthenia, morbid irritability, indigestion and constipation.[2] These early vibrators became popular among the medical profession and were used for treating a wide variety of ailments in women and men including hysteria, arthritis, constipation, amenorrhea, inflammations, and tumors; some wounded World War I soldiers received vibrotherapy as treatment at English and French hospitals in Serbia.[3]

1913 advertisement

Vibrators began to be marketed for home use in adult sex shops from around 1900 together with other electrical household goods, for their supposed health and beauty benefits. An early example was the ‘Vibratile,’ an advert for which appeared in McClure’s magazine in March 1899, offered as a cure for ‘Neuralgia, Headache, Wrinkles’. These advertisements disappeared in the 1920s, possibly because their appearance in pornography, and growing understanding of female sexual function, made it no longer tenable for mainstream society to avoid the sexual connotations of the devices.[4]

Christmas Holiday In Usa
The United States has such a diversity of cultures and traditions, it is actually quite difficult to say what is uniquely American. Many of the Christmas holiday activities vary from family to family and often depend on the cultural heritage of the family members.

A typical Christmas celebration in America mix Irish, Austrian, Polish and Belgian traditions into something that is its own.

Notwithstanding the variety of cultures and nationalities, there is an ‘ideal’ Christmas tradition which seems to be accepted by many is that Christmas is a family time with a great deal of travel happening over the holidays. The differing climates of the United States also have an influence on what happens at Christmas time. For some places the idea of a Christmas with a sparkling blanket of snow is perfect, for some planning to spend the day at the beach is ideal while some look forward to warm temperatures and lots of sunshine.

The Christmas Tree
The Christmas tree plays an important part in the holiday tradition. Often times it is topped by a star to represent the Star of Bethlehem, or by an angel which announces the birth of Christ. Many family trees have ornaments from more than one generation. Often times the heritage of the families are represented by the kind of decorations on the trees. Lights are a must and the more the better. The tree is often placed so that it can be viewed by passers-by in the street. Many living or family rooms are on the street-side in American homes.

Decorations
Many families also decorate outside of the home with regional traditions and according to the weather. Some form of lighting are often used on the homes and in the yards during the holidays. There are snowmen, Santas, manger scenes, snowflakes, reindeer, and other lighted displays in many neighborhoods. Others outline the architectural features of their homes in lights. There is sometimes a creche placed that represents the stable wherein the Christ child was born and has Mary, Joseph, the Child and various animals in attendance.

Must read aboutAdventure Tourism in USA

Food
Food plays an important part in the American Christmas. It is often a time of an extended open house with friends dropping by to bring gifts or just to wish everyone a happy holiday. At this time it is appropriate to offer these guests food and beverage, so many homes have a variety of treats prepared in advance for these occasions. Although many families serve a variety of menus for Christmas dinner, the standard fare seems to include turkey, dressing, potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, vegetables, a salad and some sort of dessert.

Churches
Various churches play an important part in the American Christmas. Many families feel that it is important to go to church on Christmas. There are also a variety of associated activities such as church dinners, live Nativity scenes, choir concerts, special church services, and a fostering of the spirit of giving to those less fortunate.

This country has a bizarre and unprecedented problem. “The longer American children are in school, the worse they perform compared to their international peers,” according to McKinsey and Company, management consultants.

Columnists at the New York Times have realized that the education crisis is grave. Tom Friedman said we’re falling off a cliff. Paul Krugman noticed our dilemma but wants to blame it on a lack of money, which is nonsense. Education budgets are massive. Here’s a better theory: the people in charge are evidently not all that interested in excellence. Nicholas Kristof pointed out that “Democrats have…stood by as generations of disadvantaged children had been cemented into an underclass by third-rate schools.” Thank you, Mr. Kristof.

My guess is that the Education Establishment (i.e., the people in charge of creating those third-rate schools) are real proud. I’m not being ironic. Dumbing-down is, I conclude, their philosophy and their goal.

Are you wondering why? Simple. These guys, from John Dewey onward, were Socialists, obsessed with molding children to fit into a new socialist paradigm. Academic success was not essential; it might even be an obstacle to the collectivist plans these people had for us.

What about how? Again, simple. Favor the non-academic and the anti-academic. Let’s say you have two pedagogical methods. Option A works better than Z. Drum roll, please. Agonize but, in the end, select Z. Concoct some good marketing prose to sell this pathetic thing. But use what does not work.

So far as I can tell, every method and approach embraced by the Education Establishment, for the past 100 years, ends up somewhere between dumb and dumber. (One might ask: are these people incompetent or purposeful? It’s not likely that anybody can be that incompetent, so I’m seeing intent.)

In any event, our educators created schools so dysfunctional that they would make students worse with each passing year, as Mckinsey and Company has stated.

To recap the reason: all the main methods (and there are dozens) used in the public schools turn out to be surprisingly counter-productive. Here’s a quick look at some of the worst offenders:

Whole Word has the peculiar property of not teaching children to read. 50,000,000 functional illiterates is a lot of dumbing-down.

Reform Math has the peculiar property of making sure that children can’t do basic arithmetic, even by college.

Constructivism (which is popular in many different subjects) has the peculiar property of making sure that children learn less than they did the year before. (Constructivism requires that children invent their own new knowledge, which takes a lot of extra time.)

Cooperative Learning has the peculiar property of making kids less independent and less able to think for themselves. This technique is helpful if you’re trying to create a herd mentality.

Outcomes-Based Education has the peculiar property of directing students toward very trivial goals (i.e., outcomes), such as discussing a movie or preparing a scrapbook.

One of the more popular methods is called Self-Esteem. Doesn’t it sound good? In fact, this thing dismantles education in several different ways. First of all, it requires praising children who do a bad job. Children become accustomed to gold stars and compliments even if they haven’t cracked a book. Why should they bother with books? But Self-Esteem is more insidious than so far suggested. Suppose you want your class to know the 10 states nearest to where they live. Some students won’t get the whole list; they will feel badly about themselves. What to do? Cut the list to six. But next year, some children may not recall the shorter list. So the list will be cut to four. Then the teachers will decide that this is too demanding and “they can look it up.” So you see that Self-Esteem undercuts from every direction until there is nothing left standing.

In 1983 a huge government commission concluded that our public schools are so bad they may as well have been designed by a hostile foreign power. That’s the incompetence that Friedman and colleagues were talking about; but they just can’t come out and say the truth. Namely, people like themselves–other liberals–were the culprits in charge. But how do they admit this after so much damage has piled up?

Meanwhile, the Business Roundtable reports that managers are struggling to find trained workers. Businesses are “wrestling with an undertrained workforce: Half see a sizable gap between their needs and employees’ skills.”

Well, I can just imagine that our Education Establishment is tickled pink.

What do we do? Fire from the top. That’s what we would do in any other area of human activity. Colossal failure year after year? Fire the bosses. Second, dismantle the anti-intellectual infrastructure that is evident everywhere throughout the school system. Get rid of a mentality that dotes on social engineering, and replace it with a mindset that glorifies intellectual engineering.

More than anything else, however, we simply need to tell the truth. Schools don’t get so bad unless somebody wants them that way. The USA is afflicted with an Education Establishment that is anti-education.

(For more about effective education, see “47: Teach One Fact Each day” on Improve-Education.org.)

Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of Improve-Education.org, a high-level education and intellectual site. One focus is reading; see “42: Reading Resources.” Another focus is education reform; see “38: Saving Public Schools.” Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is “THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.” whole

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